Astounding planned outage.

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Astounding planned outage.

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#3473763 25-Mar-2026 21:11

Handle9:

Linux:

timmmay:

A four day outage? Or random outages within a 4 day period? That doesn't seem reasonable to me. I'd change providers.

@timmmay lol

So all carriers have had multi day outages when upgrading hardware so which one are you going to change to?

My work SparkNZ was offline for 3 days when they removed the microwave link and went to fibre to the site and then removed the Huawai kit and installed the Nokia kit

Not a very well thought out post

And telcos wonder why people hate them.

It’s not about the outage. It’s about the typically abysmal way they treat their customers.

By providing better coverage and faster speeds on much newer hardware - Cry me a river

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#3473764 25-Mar-2026 21:14

If they didn't upgrade the site / hardware and install new kit then the complaints would be

" Why is my mobile data soooo slow, Why am I getting network busy I can't make calls, Oh <insert carrier name here. why are you not upgrading the network "

Edit: <insert carrier name> provides 5G in <insert location here> why are you not offering 5G

grantius

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#3473766 25-Mar-2026 21:18

If you need guaranteed coverage for text then if you had a plan with One with starlink in this case you would still have coverage. By end of the year all 3 will have basic satellite so you won't have this problem again.

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#3473768 25-Mar-2026 21:21

Here is photo of the work going onto today in Wainuiomata taken by X / twitter user CarlElphick

Yes outages & planned outage are a pain but they need to happen

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#3473769 25-Mar-2026 21:23

You can see the old mast laying on the ground now compare those panels to the new

Handle9

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#3473770 25-Mar-2026 21:26

Linux:

Handle9:

Linux:

timmmay lol

So all carriers have had multi day outages when upgrading hardware so which one are you going to change to?

My work SparkNZ was offline for 3 days when they removed the microwave link and went to fibre to the site and then removed the Huawai kit and installed the Nokia kit

Not a very well thought out post

And telcos wonder why people hate them.

It’s not about the outage. It’s about the typically abysmal way they treat their customers.

By providing better coverage and faster speeds on much newer hardware - Cry me a river

Woosh

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grantius

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#3473771 25-Mar-2026 21:26

Also if your office is running on 2degrees mobile only, you should contact your business manager as they should have let you know well in advance.

As per their outage page:

Business customers with managed services: We'll email your nominated outage contact with advance notice whenever we schedule maintenance.

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#3473772 25-Mar-2026 21:28

@Handle9

Woosh Wireless

was a New Zealand-based wireless internet provider (ISP) founded in 2003 that utilized proprietary UMTS TDD technology to deliver broadband and voice services. After facing issues with high latency, patchy coverage, and financial difficulties, the company's customer base was sold to Slingshot in 2015, with final service shutdown in 2016

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#3473775 25-Mar-2026 21:51

gbwelly:

If one of my children was injured at school and was shipped off to hospital I would be none the wiser until they failed to come home, or someone eventually drove round to tell me. The school doesn't use WhatsApp.

@gbwelly kids were injured at school before the mobile phone was invented and even before the car was invented life went on.....

I was rushed to North shore hospital when I was at primary school early 80's with anaphylaxis from eating a new multi grain bread and my Mum still managed to make it to North hospital and pick me up and take me home in time for dinner

snj

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#3473826 25-Mar-2026 22:31

Handle9:

And telcos wonder why people hate them.

It’s not about the outage. It’s about the typically abysmal way they treat their customers.

It's this exactly, there are very few providers (mobile and/or fixed) that are good at communicating outages that may affect their customers, and it's something I'd said before (Chorus' overnight maintenances a year or so ago for instance).

It basically boils down to the fact that an informed customer is a (potentially) better prepared customer.

For planned outages, if you know you are going to need to rely on your connection during the likely impact times, you can do things like redirect your inbound calls to another number or change the voicemail message to say call number X. If you're meant to be on a FaceTime, Zoom, Teams call in the middle of the night for whatever reason (Family, Work, etc), when it turns out your ISP or Chorus has schedule disruptive maintenance, you can reschedule instead of completely disappearing midcall. Insert infinite number of similar scenarios here.

It's not that these sorts of works should never happen, it's that it causes far less pain for customers if they know about it and can plan in advance around it. It's just like how the power companies do their best to notify of scheduled power outages weeks in advance. It's also important for people that may be medically dependent (either for 111, medical alarms over 4G/IP, due to expecting telehealth appointments/follow-ups, or even need to call for assistance to get outside the property) to know in case they may need relevent services.

It's not helped either by the fact that most providers' status pages aren't always user friendly, or very clear, or that it's not easy to stay subscribed to updates (I had to dig around view source for instance to find Voyager's RSS feed links for instance, even then have to contend with things that are irrelevant to fixed line updates). I've even seen cases where potentially disruptive outages for people only appear the day before. Monitoring them is basically impossible for a layperson.

And then there are the unplanned outages, the recent fibre cut in Massey is a good example, Chorus actually had really good updates throughout, especially once daylight hit. I think One had info up on their outages by 8am, Spark quickly followed. 2degrees had "no known outages" up (or cached?) for about 5 hours when I kept looking. Chorus would know what equipment disappeared off the network and who is connected to them and I believe they do tell the ISPs this, but very few do proactive "We know your connection is down, you don't need to contact our faults team, Chrous are already on it, go to their website for regular updates, which we'll also send you".

Communication is key (it's telecommunications afterall), we should be able to expect better. Again, it's not about the fact that these outages shouldn't happen, it's saying "Hey we're going to do X days of work starting on the Yth to replace major infrastructure your connection uses, the expected impact will be ..., if the weather is bad, the rain days are the Yth - Zth".

alasta

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#3473864 26-Mar-2026 09:03

I have been with Vodafone/One NZ consistently for almost ten years and I can't remember ever being subjected to a multiple day outage in any location that I regularly frequent.

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#3473880 26-Mar-2026 09:39

That’s why it pays to have a back-up with a different prepay provider not on the same network. I keep an old phone with the same contacts and a $10 prepay with a different provider to my usual one and a reminder in calendar to top up annually. Ten bucks a year for peace of mind when sh#t happens or that big quake arrives. My important people have this alternate number.

Did this after learning the hard way that internet/network is always down at the precise moment you have something super urgent happening.

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#3473887 26-Mar-2026 10:00

alasta:

I have been with Vodafone/One NZ consistently for almost ten years and I can't remember ever being subjected to a multiple day outage in any location that I regularly frequent.

@alasta That means you are in locations with over lapping coverage from other sites

OneNZ had planned work in Dargaville Northland early 2025 for like 2.5 days and as 2degrees are on the same mast this impacted both carriers

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#3473888 26-Mar-2026 10:03

Eva888:

That’s why it pays to have a back-up with a different prepay provider not on the same network. I keep an old phone with the same contacts and a $10 prepay with a different provider to my usual one and a reminder in calendar to top up annually. Ten bucks a year for peace of mind when sh#t happens or that big quake arrives. My important people have this alternate number.

Did this after learning the hard way that internet/network is always down at the precise moment you have something super urgent happening.

@Eva888 will not always work as many carriers share the same mast but have own RAN hardware and when one carrier upgrades the other carrier has to power down as well

richms

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#3473891 26-Mar-2026 10:14

timmmay:

Even posted on the website???!!! Wow! If they knew the site was going to be down for that long I'd expect people who live in the area or are regularly in the area get a letter in the post.

You are assuming that they have a name and address for the people that use their network.

Richard rich.ms

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